This invention relates to an agricultural machine having a wide spread which can be reduced in width, the machine being capable of carrying out multiple agricultural operations by adaptation of different working tools.
It is known that there are in existence numerous different types of agricultural machines, generally intended to be coupled to the back of a tractor which moves them along; these machines can be carried by the tractor itself, or again they may be in the form of trailers or semi-trailers coupled behind the tractor.
Mention may be made notably of equipment for preparing the soil such as cultivators, harrows, vibro-cultivators, or of equipment for injecting fertilizer into the soil, or again of machinery such as a seed drill or a stubble plough, or of machinery for atomising insectiside; this list is of course not by any means complete.
In their present form of embodiment, these items of agricultural machinery suffer from a disadvantage in that it is difficult to connect more than one of them simultaneously to the tractor and in that the application of several different treatments to a single area of ground requires a number of passages with the corresponding different items of machinery.
A second disadvantage of the items of agricultural machinery as at present known lies in their low width or spread, which enables only a relatively narrow band of ground to be treated at each pass; in fact, such items of machinery also have to be capable of moving by road when being transferred from one field to another or from the field to the garage or shed.
Moreover, the narrower the width of the band of ground treated in one pass of the equipment, the greater will be the number of outward and return journeys of the tractor and of the item of machinery required to complete the treatment of a field.